Take care of you Thursday: clean up time.

It’s Thursday! That means it’s time for a Take care of you Thursday post. I posted my 5 tips for cleaning awhile ago here. I thought it might be nice to expand on that and make an updated list on keeping clean organized for today’s post. These are just keeping the house tidy tips and not any of my organization systems I’ve put into place. I will share those a different day.

1. My best tip and the one that helps me the most is to do a little cleaning everyday. Every night, well almost every I’m not perfect, I do a 20 minute or so clean up of the main living spaces in our home. I do dishes, pick up the kitchen. Throw away any trash and put all dishes around the house in the sink to wash. It’s not much but just having no dishes, trash and things picked up makes everything else easier to deal with.

2. Everybody helps! I have really been trying hard to get all of us to pitch in with cleaning. On Sundays we will usually all clean for 30-45 minutes. Picking up the house, vacuuming and carpet cleaning if it needs it and working on bedrooms. During the week I try to remind my husband and daughter to pick up after themselves or everyone will pitch in for ten minutes and tidy up. I still do the majority of the cleaning but all three of us work towards picking up. Isabella has gotten pretty good at remembering to pick up after herself and as she gets older she will have more responsibilities.

3. If you have pets this one is a must, regularly vacuum, we vacuum every couple of days because our dog sheds like crazy and we have cats. Having fur on the floor makes the house feel messier so getting it cleaned up is a must.

4. I just started following Melissa Maker from Clean my space and she has some great cleaning videos. I’m following her bedroom cleaning tips found in this video. My room needed a good clean, I forget to clean it is as often as I clean everything else.
5. More stuff out and less stuff in is the secret to organizing. I’m constantly trying to purge things from our house. I also make an effort to really think about things before I need them. I have a habit of buying things and then they just become clutter. I’m trying to get it to where we have less stuff because less stuff means less clutter.

Comments

What a great tip about cleaning everyday for 20 minutes. I definitely should be better about doing a little each day instead of making up for it on the weekend and being stuck cleaning all day!Jenn @ hellorigby! recently posted…The Chowder Kimono + Coulon Park

I vacuum every day – like, every.single.day. And cleaning the rest of the house is such a chore! I’m checking out that video now! I love youtube videos! 🙂kendall recently posted…StitchFix: Styling a size 16: July Box

First of all I love your blog! Second of all, thank you because i have been so slacking on the cleaning. I like working, writing, blogging, playing with my kids. I used to like cleaning but not so much anymore so I do the bare minimum and things build up. I needed to read something like this today.Christen recently posted…Can We Have Anything Other Than Our Parents’ Marriages?

Cleaning every day for 20-30 minutes is what keeps me sane – otherwise the weekends would just be full of cleaning! (more so then they already are) Thanks for the tips!Rebekah recently posted…Weekly Highlights

I feel you so much on #3. We have 2 dogs and a cat and I feel like I vacuum every. single. day. We also have a mint robot sweeper/mop that helps out a ton. I run it when we go to bed at night and we wake up to nice clean floors.Jessica Doll recently posted…Alaskan Cruise Day 5 / Juneau, Alaska Part 2

I use to be a stickler about only me cleaning because I wanted stuff done a certain way. That lasted until we added littles to our home ha! Now everyone pitches in and I’m less stressed and it’s win/win for everyone.kristine foley recently posted…Weekend Rewind – Everyday Saturday #15